


not now, but maybe later

by Morning66



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: First Kiss, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Swearing, a little angsty but mostly not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:15:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26706589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morning66/pseuds/Morning66
Summary: “I have to tell you something.” Richie says it quick and fast, all in one burst, not entirely sure what he’s going to say, but knowing he’s got to get it out fast. “I—“I carved our names into the kissing bridge three weeks ago, he thinks.“I never actually fucked your mother,” he says instead.(Or, Bev and Bill aren’t the only ones who kiss the day they swear the oath.)
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 12
Kudos: 150





	not now, but maybe later

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!!! =)
> 
> This is just something that came to my mind! I hope you like it!
> 
> Warnings: Homophobia, Internalized and otherwise, swearing and sexual references

They defeat It and then they stand in a circle and cut their palms and press them together, a dirty bloody circle, but even Eddie isn’t talking about diseases, talking about how this might give them fucking AIDS. It’s fucking spiritual, Richie thinks, a scene out of Roman Mythology, maybe, or Jonestown possibly, people standing in a circle and waiting to die.

Except they’re not waiting to die. They’re waiting to live, waiting to escape like rockets and bolt for the sky or at least some place that isn’t Derry.

_I give my blood to you,_ Richie thinks, and can’t help but be reminded of the wine in Church, how it’s supposed to represent the body of Jesus fucking Christ and isn’t that a hoot. That’s what got him kicked out of CCD permanently, he thinks, saying something along the lines of that with a few choice words added.

So, they do their ceremony, their beautiful, brave ceremony, and then it’s over. Over and done with and Richie rides his bike home through the tall, yellow grass and along the potholed roads that nobody cares to fix because they’ll just go bad the next winter, open wound pressed against the dirty blue grip, blood mixing with dirt and he knows Eddie would have a pig if he found out.

He gets home and the car is missing and the lights are off and Richie’s heart sinks down to the sewers, down where he hopes It’s fucking corpse is lying, dead and bloody and bloated and defeated. He unlocks the door with his key, always the latch key boy, and he can feel it when he goes in that there’s no one there, not a soul.

There’s a note on the table: _Richie, went for dinner, be back later, order a pizza._ There’s a ten next to it, crinkled and sad looking and Richie crushes it in his hand and when he finally unclenches he realizes that he smeared blood on it, all over Alexander Hamilton’s face.

Blood, and isn’t that fucking gross. Fucking blood on his pizza money. God.

Richie feels like throwing up then and there because they defeated the clown and everything’s supposed to be perfect and normal and great, but it’s not because Bev’s moving and he’s a fucking annoying idiot and his parents can’t even fucking stand to be around him. 

Instead of crying, Richie slips the bill in the pocket of his shorts and gets back on his bike. He rides to the Pizza Hut in town and waits in line to order a slice, keeping his head down when the football boys already dressed in their letterman jackets cut him in line.

“Thanks, faggot,” the one with the blonde hair and the handsome face says and Richie thinks that it’s so fucking lousy that all the one’s who look the best are really the worst on the inside.

( _Except E—_ his brain starts and Richie shuts it up right there.)

He sits on the curb outside and eats his pizza, pepperoni even though his favorite is pineapple because they don’t sell pineapple in Derry—that’s too cosmopolitan.

His sister made him pineapple pizza though once, one night just like this except she was there, plopping canned pineapple on the thick Pizza Hut slabs in their not so empty kitchen. She’s gone now, gone to college two years ago this September, gone never to be seen again. She forgot them, Richie always knew, but now he knows she Forgot them with a capital F.

(See, Bill, there are other ways to lose siblings.)

And so he eats his pizza without pineapple and picks at a scab on his knee and by the time he’s stuffing the crust in his mouth, chewing with it half open because he’s a pig, the sun is already starting to set.

_God, why does it have to set so early now?_ Richie wonders, wishing it was still June, still the month with short lightning bug nights and no clowns, not just yet.

Richie gets on his bike and he’s halfway home when he realizes that he can’t do this. Can’t go home to his fucking empty house, to cold silences and sad rooms. 

Before he can think too much about it, he turns around and heads for Eddie’s house.

If it were a few years ago, fuck if it were last summer, he’d go to Stan’s. Stan, who he’s known longer than anyone, who’s his opposite in just about every way, who fits comfortably, contrastingly with him. They’d play a game or look at bird pictures and Stan’s mom would bring them snacks and smile and kiss Stan’s cheek gently, giving not asking, happy her son had someone to talk to.

This is not last summer, though. Something erupted this winter and into the spring and then into the summer, a Mount St. Helens explosion of feelings and achings and yearnings. 

Richie stashes his bike behind Eddie’s neighbor shrubs so Mrs. K won’t see and sneaks into Eddie’s hard, trying to stay in the shadows. With practiced expertise, he climbs the tree that he knows leads to Eddie’s bedroom, his long, spindly limbs finally good for something. The curtains are mostly shut when he gets up, but he can see light shining through the cracks.

Perched on a branch that’s just thick enough to hold him, Richie knocks on the cool glass, quietly, or at least as quietly as he ever does anything because he doesn’t want Mrs. K to hear.

The curtains jostle and then there’s Eddie peaking out, eyes wide and a little nervous and, God, it hurts Richie that a fucking sewage clown made Eddie scared to look out his own window. When he sees it’s only Richie, Eddie grins, quick and fast and something in Richie takes off flying, doing loop de loops in his stomach, zinging off his appendix and colon and intestines.

Eddie cracks the window. “What are you fucking doing here?” It lacks any bite.

Richie shrugs and the branch shakes and he has a sudden fear that he’s about to fall to his death, right here, right now, in Eddie’s front yard. “Wrong window. I was looking for your mom, Eds!”

Eddie face morphs into a frown. “Get in here before the mosquitoes get in and we both die of malaria,” he says. “And, once and for all, don’t call me Eds.”

Richie slides in through the window, slipping a bit over Eddie’s bedside table and half jumping, half falling onto Eddie’s bed. 

“Nobody’s gotten malaria since fucking Jamestown,” Richie says, using a bit of his history knowledge. “It’s, like, eradicated in America.” 

Eddie shrugs his shoulders, but there’s an impish grin tugging at his features. “You never know,” he says, trying to sound sage, Richie thinks.

Then, Richie has to stop and think, or really not think just stare, propped against Eddie’s bed, hands pressing against the quilt Eddie’s had as long as he’s known him, the one with airplanes and clouds. Stare, because Eddie’s standing there, already in dinosaur pajamas, wet hair standing this way and that from a shower.

_Fuck, he’s cute,_ Richie thinks and hates himself for it.

“What are you looking at, dickwad?” Eddie asks, coming forward to wave a hand in Richie’s face.

Richie reaches out one of his grabby, grubby hands, fingers heading for Eddie’s cheeks, for the place right above the top crease of his grin. “You’re just so cute, Eds. I just can’t help myself but stare.”

It’s too much truth, enough truth that it gets Richie’s heart beating fast fast fast, but sometimes that’s the best way to lie—to pass off truth in a lie, to make an honest response into a joke, a fib.

Eddie intercepts Richie’s hand, grabbing it in his own. His fingers linger and Richie’s hand feels like it’s pulsing and then Eddie opens his mouth and—

“You never washed your hand, Richie! No bandaid or anything. Do you know how much dirt could have gotten in it? Shit, it could be infected already!”

Richie shrugs his shoulders. “I forgot,” he says and hopes Eddie doesn’t ask more because he can’t explain it anymore. Can’t explain that maybe he doesn’t care if his blood is dirty and his cut is infected and rotting away and—.

And Eddie sighs, the sigh he always seems to reserve for Richie, the you’re such an idiot sigh.

Richie likes that he has a sigh for him more than he probably should.

“C’mon,” Eddie says, hand still around Richie’s, “Let’s go clean it before you die of shock or something.”

He tugs Richie out the door and quietly they creep to the hall bathroom. The house is silent, silent as a mouse, and Richie is creeped out a bit by it. Usually there’s at least the sound of Mrs. K watching TV downstairs, faint blue light reflecting up the stairwell. 

In the bathroom, Eddie flips on the lights and closes and locks the door. After a moments thought, he turns on the fan, the buzzing echoing around the quiet room.

“She’s ignoring me, I think. Waiting for me to come crying so she can stuff me up with all those fucking gazebos. I think she took fucking sleeping pills, though. She’s dead to the world.”

I wish she was dead, Richie thinks which probably makes him a pretty shitty person. Instead of saying that, he asks “Gazebos? What the fuck’s a gazebo?”

He’s pretty sure Eddie is not referring to the little shed things rich people have in places that aren’t Derry.

A grimace crosses Eddie’s face and Richie feels bad for asking. “I’ll tell you later,” Eddie says and he says it like he means it, not like it’s just an expression. “But first, let’s make sure you don’t fucking die.”

“Whatever you say, Dr. K!” Richie quips and then bursts out laughing because that was a good one, even for him. “Get in there, old chap.”

Eddie scowls at him. “I swear the British guy is getting fucking worse every single time you use him.”

Richie sticks out his tongue, but Eddie’s not paying attention, staring at his hand and biting his lip and looking like he’s thinking. He reaches out and turns on the water, both knobs, and then grabs Richie’s hands and plunges them inside, running water over bony fingers and palms with barely there fat, scrubbing away lines of dirt.

It seems to take an inexplicably long time to clean his hands. Inexplicably long and inexplicably short because Eddie’s hands are running themselves over Richie’s fast and rough, trying to get out the dirt and grime. Richie focuses his eyes on the tiles around the rim of the room, the one’s with some sort of wavy design. He tries to pretend that Eddie cleaning his hands isn’t doing anything to him, isn’t making his heart race a hundred miles a minute and his brain feel lightheaded.

_Eddie wouldn’t do this if he knew,_ Richie thinks. If he knew that, he’d stay the fuck away from him, run the exact opposite direction screaming about fucking AIDS and hangnails and queers.

When Eddie finishes, he pulls Richie’s hands out of the water and turns off the faucets. “Sit on the tub,” he says. “I need to find Neosporin. And rubbing alcohol.”

“Jesus, Eds, this is just like last night when your mom and I—“

“Don’t finish that fucking sentence,” Eddie says, back to Richie as he looks through the medicine cabinet.

“Had shower sex,” Richie finishes, just as Eddie turns around with two bottles in his hands.

Eddie slaps Richie over the head with the Neosporin cream bottle and then takes a seat on the tub brim with him. “Give me you hands, dickhead.”

Richie hands them over, watching as Eddie rubs on the clear alcohol and moves to Neosporin. It gets up his nose and he feels like he’s going to sneeze, but he swallows it back, not wanting to break up the moment because Eddie’s being fucking gentle and he likes it way too much. Eddie must hear him, though, because he glances up and their eyes meet and something creeps into the bathroom, something heavy and dense and electric and it’s moments like these that Richie wonders if maybe just maybe he’s not the only one with a fucking crush on his best friend.

He’s not sure if that makes it more or less scary.

The moment is shattered when they hear a loud clump outside. “Eddie?” calls a voice that’s sickeningly familiar. “What are you doing in there?”

It’s significantly less sweet than usual, a reminder she’s still mad at Eddie.

“I thought your mom—“ Richie starts and Eddie slaps a hand over his mouth mid sentence.

“Shut up,” he mouths.

“Just showering, Ma,” Eddie calls. There’s a shifting outside, a board creaking and Richie can’t help but remember how there’s no lock on the door because Eddie’s mom’s got no sense of privacy.

“It’s late,” she says, grumpily. “Don’t be long.”

“I won’t,” Eddie agrees.

There’s a sigh, a heavy one from outside. “Goodnight, Eddie. We’ll talk in the morning, okay?”

Richie can tell from Eddie’s face that he hates this. Hates to come crawling back to his creepy ass mom. “Night, mommy.”

There’s a shuffle outside, footsteps moving away from the door. Richie and Eddie stay as quiet as they can and listen and wait. There’s a door shutting outside and then something breaks in the room.

Eddie takes his hand off Richie’s mouth and stands up. Richie follows, licking his teeth where Eddie’s hand left fucking ointment. It tastes gross and slimy and Richie wonders if it’s going to poison him. Maybe he’ll have to get his stomachs pumped, right here on Eddie’s floor, staring up at the ceiling and wondering how long the spindly crack’s been there.

He’s thinking about that when Eddie turns on the shower, startling him out of his thoughts. “Shit, Eddie, are you actually gonna shower?”

Because if he’s going to shower that’s gonna, that’s gonna—

Eddie flushes, just a tiny bit. “No, idiot. I just wanted her to hear it. Jesus, fuck.”

Richie feels embarrassed and wants to shout out that he’s not thinking of Eddie showering even though he is and is grateful that for once in his thirteen years his brain gets somewhere faster than his mouth and keeps him from saying it. That’d be fucking weird if he did and Eddie’d probably be fucking creeped out.

Instead, he plops down lazily on the floor, putting his back to the wall below the window. His shoes, white soles stained permanently brown from mud and shit, like literal gray-water shit, rest against the base of the Kaspbrak’s porcelain throne.

“Do you know how many germs are on the floor of the bathroom?” Eddie asks, staring down at him.

“Eight hundred and twenty two, “ Richie says matter of factly, “But since this is your mom’s bathroom and she scrubs it every, like, hour there’s only one.”

He points wildly towards his chest and he knows he’s grinning way too big and probably looking stupid, but it shocks a laugh out of Eddie so it’s worth it. 

“C’mon, Eds,” Richie says and pats the spot beside him. “Two days ago this time we were in the fucking sewers.”

Eddie shivers once at that, a shiver that’s so violent it’s visible through his pajamas and then sits down next to Richie, close enough that their sides touch. 

“Don’t remind me or else I’ll puke,” Eddie says and Richie’s aching to push, about to reach for his cheek and say whatever comes out of his mouth because he fucking doesn’t know when Eddie continues. “They’re all fake.”

Richie blinks, not sure what Eddie means because he’s pretty fucking sure that the demonic, murderous clown that lives beneath his town is the realest thing in the entire world.

“What?” he asks and then he follows Eddie’s gaze, follows it to where it intersects with the fucking medicine cabinet that’s stuffed halfway to Sunday. God, is it stuffed like the shit that’s in the kitchen isn’t enough.

“They’re all gazebos, “ Eddie says, glaring at them. Placebos, Richie mind supplies, placebos, they learned about them in science last year. “Fake medicine. I’m not actually sick, she just fucking tells me I am. That’s what we fought about before we went into the sewers and—“

He cuts off and Richie doesn’t fill in, doesn’t need to fill because the answer is there, there in the air, there in the shadows and the open.

“Jesus fucking Christ, that’s fucking fucked up, Eds.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says and his voice sounds smaller than ever, smaller than it’s ever been because even though he’s short, Eddie has never been small.

Richie stares at the door directly across from him, white-painted wood with a chip from when he banged it into the sink two summers ago, back when things were a million times simpler. Mrs. K had kicked him out then with a slap on the butt with a wooden spoon and hadn’t let him come back for three whole weeks. Somehow, knowing what she’s doing to Eddie, makes her seem ten times more sinister, an evil prescience outside that door waiting to pounce.

Richie digs his fingers into a rip in his jeans and pulls at the threads. The room feels heavy, heavy with secrets, heavy with the foggy steam of the shower. “Does that mean you’ll stop badgering everybody about getting sick and germs and shit?”

It’s a joke and he’s pretty sure it’s a bad one, worse than usual, but anger flashes across Eddie’s face and so Richie’s pretty sure he’s successful. “Don’t you realize you don’t have to be chronically ill to get killed by a disease, asshole?”

Richie sighs. “I know, Eds, that’s why I use a condom.” He rolls his eyes.

Eddie reaches over and punches him in the shoulder, not hard though. “AIDS isn’t a joke either.”

It could be, for you, Richie thinks. You’re not the one who’s gonna die if he has sex with anyone, but his hand. 

He hates himself for thinking that, but he hates the world more.

“I have to tell you something.” Richie says it quick and fast, all in one burst, not entirely sure what he’s going to say, but knowing he’s got to get it out fast. “I—“

_I carved our names into the kissing bridge three weeks ago._

_I got called a faggot today and maybe it’s true and isn’t that the worst thing in the world?_

“I never actually fucked your mother,” he says instead.

Eddie stares at him for a second and then bursts out laughing. It’s not even a laugh, really, it’s a giggle, a fucking giggle from the kid in the T-Rex pajamas. 

Richie’s not sure what makes him do it except that he’s wanted to do it all summer and maybe before that and he never has been good about impulse control.

He leans forward and smashes his face into Eddie’s. He can’t see well because of the steam fogging up his glasses and Eddie’s mid-laugh so he hits on an odd slanted angle, but it sends shivering tingles all throughout his face, down to every extremity he has. It only lasts a second and then he’s pulling back, wiping his glasses on his shirt almost immediately so he doesn’t have to see Eddie’s expression.

Blurily, he watches Eddie reach up and press a hand to his lips. “What—?”

Richie scrubs at his lenses harder and blurts, “Bill and Bev did that today.”

It’s supposed to be a secret, Richie guesses, but he’d still been trying to find his wallet when they did it. 

Richie finally puts his glasses back on and makes himself look at Eddie, who looks like, well, Eddie. He doesn’t look disgusted or mad, just confused and maybe a little scared, but that’s kind of how Eddie always looks, honestly. His cheeks are pink, high up by his freckles and he’s staring at Richie.

“Why’d you do that, though?” Eddie asks, not mad, just poking, Richie thinks, poking at something he probably shouldn’t poke at.

Richie shrugs and puts on his biggest, fakest bravado. “Show, don’t tell, Eddie! Didn’t you hear Mrs. Roberts in English?”

“That wasn’t what she meant, doofus,” Eddie says, but it’s still quiet, hesitant.

“How do you know that, Eds? She might’ve,” Richie takes the opportunity to lean into Eddie’s space, employing his favorite deflection strategy—making everything into a big fucking joke. “Maybe I should show you again, make Roberts wet dream come true.”

It’s a joke, it’s a joke, but it’s also a test. A test to see why Eddie’s cheeks are pink and why he hasn’t punched Richie’s ugly mug just yet.

If Eddie’s eyes were scared before, they’re terrified now. “N-n-n-“

He doesn’t get a word out, but Richie’s heart plummets anyway. “Turning into Big Bill, are we?”

It’s mean, he knows, but he wants to say it. Wants to be mean about this, if nothing else.

“Not now,” Eddie says and he says it so fast Richie’s not sure he heard him right. “C’mon, idiot, my mom’s probably asleep now. The pills she takes put her out in like ten minutes flat or sometimes five, I don’t know.”

Eddie says it all in one burst, pulling himself up from the floor and turning off the running water. Richie just stares at him.

“You coming?” Eddie asks when he gets to the door.

Richie blinks. “I’m gonna take a shit first.” 

Eddie’s nose wrinkles in that cute way it always does. “Gross, “ he says and shuts the door.

Richie takes his shit and as he washes his hands, he stares at the fogged up mirror. It’s too steamed to see his face and for some reason he likes that. Likes only being able to make out a blurry face, a blurry mess of dark hair.

His hand’s still dripping with water and soap when he reaches out and writes _R + E_ on the mirror, finger cutting through the fog in clean, swift lines. _R + E._

“Not now,” he whispers and feels himself grin and he can begin to see it through the jagged letters that are starting to drip, revealing more of the boy looking in the mirror. “Not now.”

They don’t talk about it when Richie gets back to Eddie’s room. They don’t. Instead they talk about nothing and everything, TV and how Bev’s getting the fuck out of here and which teacher’s they’ve heard are bad in eighth grade. 

“You wanna stay?” Eddie asks when it’s getting late and Richie’s heart jumps. 

He thinks Eddie knows maybe, knows that he doesn’t want to go home to a dark, empty house, but he doesn’t care because Eddie still wants him to stay after what he did in the bathroom.

“Yeah, that’d be—that’d be good,” he says and they share Eddie’s twin bed that’s really too small for two half grown boys.

Ten minutes in, when Richie can tell Eddie’s just as awake as he is, he gathers up the courage to press his foot against Eddie’s.

Eddie presses back and it feels like something, something bigger than everything else before it, something momentous and life changing and there.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!!! :)


End file.
